I wrote this yesterday at the AWhere Blog: Geo-Analytics Transforms CA Politics. It’s a story told in ever-increasing zoom about how the Proposition 8 opponents Google Mapped the pro-Prop8 donors. An interesting and intense demonstration of how location intelligence and mapping creates actionable insight.
Final Screen Shot: Street View, Anyone?
Apologies for the deafening silence over here. Busy on a research project, a web-development project (that’s almost done) and firming up my retainer clients for 2009. Living the “Be The Change” movement of Obama and beyond, and will have a lot to talk about in another few weeks, so expect this space to heat back up.
In the meantime, I am keeping up with my Twittering (tweeting — still mildly repulsed by the whole lexicon in there. i mean “tweeple”? seriously?) and Deliciousing (sadly, it, too, will probably be a word soon enough), so if you want some “in between the lines” hints on things I’m working on, they are two good places to look.
In addition, here are some good blog posts I written elsewhere this month which are more specific to individual projects, but should be interesting to you nonetheless:
AWhere
Business Catapult
More to come, soon. Thanks for reading.
Wow. There have been many “I never thought I would read about that” moments this year, but to read an article on the BBC about the concept that banks could offer negative interest makes me wonder if the apocalypse really is upon us. Also called demurrage, negative interest is a carrying charge, and one that people might pay if they think their money is really at risk.
From the BBC:
Justin Urquhart Stewart, director of Seven Investment Management, says rates have been negative before.
“It does sound very strange, but it has happened in the past.
“If you go back more than 20 years to Switzerland, people were so worried about the value of currencies that they were running to anything they saw as a safe currency and the Swiss franc was it.
“So overseas investors had to pay for the privilege of holding Swiss francs – a negative interest rate.”
But that’s just the beginning. Another effect of demurrage is that it encourages spending, because your money will be worth less tomorrow than it is today. Of course, you ought to be spending money on something that will be of greater value tomorrow than it is today.
What’s the nuance?
In the BBC piece, the “rational” economists and bankers say that it won’t happen, despite the examples to the contrary, but the very fact that the article was not laughed out of the newsroom points to an incredible shift in what’s possible.
As we wrote just last month, innovative money, currency and exchange systems are getting more and more attention these days. Innovative money systems are not so distant anymore.
Just posted over at the Business Catapult Blog:
It’s no secret that IPOs have been at a near-standstill for the past few years. In addition to the growing financial crisis and general gloom, the unintended consequences of the demands for more financial regulation in the wake of Enron, WorldCom and other related advantage-taking in the 90s has been a horrific hurdle to companies that want to raise equity on the open markets.
…
As attention shifts in the next administration to fostering the development of more green technologies, a healthy IPO market will be even more critical to inspiring innovation. It should also be noted that the necessary funding and interest in technology based IPOs will have a positive, derivative impact on interest in math and science education in the US, an area in which our deficit is widely acknowledged. While “DEregulation” is typically favored by pro-business constituents, given the severity of the crisis we must pursue short term “REregulation” of this important part of our economy, similar to that seen recently by the banking industry
Lots of tasty links, quotes and data to fill in the gap.